Fairground colours fade with sunlight;
chrome still glints, but tawdry pastels
replace pounding neon, and disproportioned
Disney silhouettes pale under ragged awnings.
(Notes for a poem, rather than a finished piece.)
Continue reading “fairground colours”
I have a profile on the LinkedIn system and regularly receive updates on what changes have been made on the profiles of people within my network. This morning I found this in my inbox (the two lines refer to the same person):
Continue reading “professional – and other – skills”
Muppet-haired willow
tosses her head
at the coming storm
I think it’s Animal that she reminds me of – the crazy drummer – though her hair obviously isn’t the right colour.
I don’t have many more shooting stars poems to post on the blog, but there are other things being celebrated this weekend, as well as the perseids.
It’s been several years since I’ve spent August in Spain, as I’ve attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, both as participant and as course leader, since I first won a place some years ago.
Before that, though, I was living in Madrid, and August was important en mi barrio for la fiesta de la Paloma. This year, Monday 15th August will be a fiesta nacional (la Asunción de la Virgen), and in her honour I have dug out this old poem. It was first published in the New Entertainer, I think, when I was writing my Capital Letters column:
Continue reading “stars and doves”
Not perseids this time, just sparkling sunshine reflected off waves that looks** like shooting stars if you screw your eyes up against the glare:
Postcard from the beach
The weather is nice…
The sun is dropping
diamonds on the sea.
I squint against the glare
and see a storm
of shooting stars that fall
too fast to single one
and make a wish.
Yet this whole moment
is a wish for you.
** yes, the singular verb agrees with its subject – the sparkling sunshine – but it sure sounds odd.
don't confuse the narrator 